WHAT MAKES GREAT NEIGHBORHOODS?​

​Great neighborhoods are not great by coincidence. They are great because they are safe and they offer opportunities for creativity, diversity and mobility. Mostly, neighborhoods become great because people there care for one another and participate in community life. ​

WHAT THEY ARE NOT!​​​

​​SHOPPING OR WORK?​​Neighborhoods are NOT a commercial strip, a box store, shopping mall, or an industrial park, no matter how many times they are called “shopping village” or “green acres estates”. These are places to buy things or to work. A neighborhood might require shops nearby, but only because we use those things to make our neighborhood great.

WALKABILITY​​​Great neighborhoods are NOT hostile to walking. If we must drive to local amenities like grocery and simple conveniences, that puts us into a vehicle away from visiting or interacting with those neighbors who actually comprise the lifeblood of a neighborhood, which is, actually, people. Neighborhoods must be walkable.​

BARE MINIMUMS?​​​A neighborhood is NOT place that provides a bare minimum of satisfactory living conditions. That is not a satisfactory goal of 21st Century habitat. It is not enough to provide basic utilities like clean water, garbage pickup, snow removal, or street cleaning, adequate car parking areas, a few sidewalks, and so forth. Those are the bare minimums for decent habitat. They are far from enough for a great neighbourhood.

​WHAT THEY ARE!​

​COMMERCIAL FACILITIES​There may have been a time long ago when a cluster of commercial areas did represent a communal gathering place where people socialized in the neighborhood. Box stores and regional malls ended that. Great neighborhoods have access to well used, locally-relevant, and walkable commercial areas. Local coffee shops, grocers, pharmacies, hair salons and barber shops, bookstores/music stores, neighborhood pubs, and other neighborhood-oriented commercial activities provide an important service to great neighborhoods. ​

​WALKABLE​​A great neighborhood must be a place where people have an opportunity to walk safely, with meaningful destinations.​​

DIVERSITY​​To be really great, if at all possible, great neighborhoods will benefit from different kinds of people, ages, incomes, and ethnicities to give it cultural flavor. Such diversity will provide opportunities not available elsewhere. It helps neighbors learn about, interact with, teach and be taught by, different kinds of people from different walks of life.​

...other characteristics of great neighborhoods include...​

AMENITIES​Great neighborhoods also need nearby amenities for those residents to meet, recreate or learn. They might include a memorial or monument of symbolic value. They might also include a quality school, a local park, or a walking or biking trail. If seniors, teens or toddlers are nearby, great neighborhoods should contain easily accessible playgrounds for children, teens and adults alike. If people with physical or mental challenges reside nearby, amenities should include such things as ramps and at-grade crossings, signage, and other features that create an inclusive public realm.

NETWORKED LAND USESOne of the opportunities available in great neighborhoods is a land use balance with a range of amenities and activities. However that depends on whether we mean the street, the block or the cluster of connected blocks. It is unlikely a street alone will have the space to contain more than one of two amenities. So in a great neighborhood an inventory of amenities and activities emerges from a) when it is collaboratively decided with residents, and b) on a block and in a connected cluster of immediate blocks creating a complex network of neighborhood relationships.

MOBILITYGreat neighborhoods have access to a safe, efficient network of transportation options. Those options should include walkability, through sidewalks and paths, bicycle trails, sheltered, clean and interesting public transit stops within a 10 minute walk of anywhere in that neighborhood, and vehicle roadways narrow enough to slow traffic and give way to pedestrians.

NEIGHBORHOOD HUBSGreat neighborhoods have ample land use for the public realm - sometimes called community spaces. Traditionally these include community centers, but too many such places are underused by most residents. Thus, great neighborhoods have a geographical center, or nexus, for shared cultural and social activities, for the whole neighborhood. A great neighborhood will have city support to sponsor such events regularly through the annual Safety and Development Plan. These events include farmers markets, music events, cultural festivals, social gatherings, and so forth. A great neighborhood will have such events in the common hub area regularly throughout the year.

BOUNDARIES​In great neighborhoods residents know their geography - neighborhoods have boundaries. But those boundaries are not a wall that excludes others, but rather symbolic and real edges that define that place. They help create internal cohesion as people who live in a place get to know their neighbors. Some neighborhood boundaries are decided by those outside the neighborhood, for historical or political reasons. Residents do not need to retain these boundaries, they can choose differently. In great neighborhoods boundaries do not constrain residents into one single image of themselves apart from others. Boundaries should allow for connectivity - physical and social links - to other neighborhoods across the entire city. Great neighborhoods fit in to the larger city ecosystem of neighborhoods in a symbiotic fashion, they avoid NIMBYism and encourage inclusive values. In SafeGrowth® that is done through the annual Safety and Development plans that offer residents the opportunity to dialogue with others inside and outside their neighborhood about where neighborhoods start and end.

... and above all, great neighborhoods have SafeGrowth® elements such as...​

A NEIGHBORHOOD VISIONA great neighborhood will have an opportunity to co-create a safety and development vision for what it wants to achieve. Those goals should be measurable and realistic. For example the Safety and Development plan may aim for a 25% reduction in vehicle related crime. It may also aim for a 20% increase in neighborhood social activities and a 50% decrease in vehicle collisions. Having input on such a plan provides everyone in the neighborhood with an opportunity to create their own community destiny with, and by, other neighbors, rather than having those things imposed by others.

AN ANNUAL NEIGHBORHOOD SAFETY AND DEVELOPMENT PLANTypically neighborhood goals, services, and safety is handled by outsiders - police, city hall, and utility companies. A great neighborhood will have in place a process to create its own annual safety and development plan. A group of resident volunteers, along with professionals like police and planners, will assist with the development of that plan. Those volunteers will receive adequate training and resources from the municipal government to establish their plan. They will also be solicited or selected by a random and democratic process so that anyone in the neighborhood can participate. The entire neighborhood will have an opportunity to provide feedback on that annual plan.

CO-OPERATIVE DECISIONS​Many decisions of neighborhood life - what amenities make a neighborhood work, what problems need addressing, or what social activities to schedule - will require some way to organize, plan, and get things done. Decisions need to be made. In great neighborhoods there are opportunities for all in the decision-making process. Not everyone wishes to, or is able to, participate regularly. But a great neighborhood will have a well-understood collaborative process for residents to gather in common cause and make choices with effective decision-making methods, such as sociocracy. In SafeGrowth® that is done through the SafeGrowth® Leadership Teams and steps within the Safety and Development Plan.

SOCIAL COHESION​Above all, in great neighborhoods residents have a sense of place and social cohesion with each other. They may be proud of some local event, sports team or local hero. They feel safe from crime because they are relatively free from crime. They willingly participate in local events or volunteer for resolving some local need or problem. They know that their neighborhood is inclusive, not exclusive, and their life is enriched by living in that place.

SafeGrowth is a people-based planning method for creating 21st Century neighborhoods of imagination, livability, and safety. It develops new relationships between city government and residents in order to prevent crime and plan for the future. While technology and evidence-based practice plays a role, SafeGrowth is based on community building through annual SafeGrowth plans and neighborhood problem-solving teams networked throughout the city.​